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Curly greeted him with a pound on the back as he leaned in. “I’ve got your six, Bake. Promise. You can count on me this time,” he whispered.
“Thanks.” He waited until Rooster, late as always, rolled in with Bullets, who was riding him about being tardy.
“So, uh...” He coughed but no one noticed or stopped their various conversations.
“Yo, doofuses! Bacon’s trying to speak.” Curly went up to level eleven in volume, which brought the room to a suffocating silence as all eyes turned toward him.
Now or never. “So... I’m bringing a date to the wedding.”
“Way to get laid.”
“Good for you.”
“Uh...why are you telling us?” Shiny asked. “Is she pregnant?”
Bullets promptly whopped him in the head. “You can’t ask that.”
“My date is a guy.”
“Oh, right on.” Rooster looked up from tying his boot to give Bacon an unexpected fist bump. “Mine too.”
“You too?” Bacon blinked, trying to follow.
“Oh, come on.” Rooster straightened and looked around the room. “How many times do I have to say equal opportunity before you guys get it? I welcome all attention, and when a cutie slides into my DMs, I’m not gonna get hung up on labels.”
“What the heck?” Bullets shook his head. “Man, first Lowe’s gay, now both of you are bi—”
“Pan for me, actually,” Bacon corrected.
“I’m just saying—”
“Think long and hard about what you’re saying next,” Curly warned him, wagging a finger. “I stood by and let Donaldson get away with his crap for far too long. I let the rest of you make bad jokes. I let down my best friend in the process, and it took almost dying for me to realize what a jackass I was being not speaking up. I’m not going to make that mistake again. So unless your next observation is hella helpful, you might want to put a sock in it.”
That stunned everyone back into silence for a long moment before there were several murmured apologies.
“Sorry, Bake.”
“We’ll do better, Rooster.”
“So, um, who’s the lucky guy?” Shiny asked when all that died down.
“Ah. Well, this is the tricky part, and really why I needed to talk to you. It’s Spencer. Spencer Bryant.”
“Man, were you guys fucking while he was embedded?” Rooster asked with more admiration than censure in his tone. “LT is gonna have your ass.”
“We got friendly while he was with us, but everything...else came after.”
“Damn. I hope y’all’s dicks have timestamps ’cause Naval PR is gonna want all up in y’all’s business.” Irving laughed. He came from the Florida panhandle and generally didn’t speak much unless it was a wisecrack like this that got everyone laughing.
“We’ll deal with any flack from PR. I just wanna make sure you guys are all cool with him.”
“Not sure how I feel about him spilling all our secrets.” Shiny made a face. “But if you say he’s cool...”
“He’s not going to spill secrets.” For the first time, Bacon was a little bit relieved about Spencer tabling the book project. It meant one less thing to have to try to explain today anyway. “He’s a reporter, but he’s not out to get anyone, I promise. And you can trust him to stay quiet about important stuff.”
He looked right at Rooster with that last bit, trying to convey that Spencer wouldn’t out him, not that Rooster seemed to have much issue with who knew what.
“Dude, I really don’t care if you’re banging the pope or whoever, but can we please get to playing?” Riddles asked, and a bunch of guys in the back nodded in unison.
Choosing captains, Curly gestured at Bacon and Rooster. “We gotta let the new chief flex his muscles. And maybe if we make Rooster captain, he won’t lag behind.”
Bacon’s chest went tight. He got what Curly was trying to do, and it was a nice gesture on his part, so Bacon picked him first, and Rooster picked Bullets in another nice gesture, and then they were done with niceness and on to the serious business of kicking ass. As it should be. And with that, a hundred-pound load lifted off Bacon. The team would survive this, maybe even come out stronger for it. Just like him and Spencer, hopefully.
* * *
Bacon straightened his new chief’s dinner dress uniform as he paced the parking lot of the large suburban church where the wedding was being held. Rachel’s family was all from the northern San Diego suburbs, and Curly joked that since her parents were paying, they could all handle the drive. The wedding day was perfect San Diego weather with clear blue skies and moderate temperatures, but apparently traffic was snarled on I-5, which meant Spencer was running late. Which meant no pre-wedding sex at his hotel like they’d planned. And it might mean no seeing Spencer until the reception, which would suck.
“Bacon?” The LT, also in dress uniform, strode over, his much taller, glamorous blonde wife on his arm. The few times Bacon had met the woman he’d marveled at the LT’s good fortune. The LT whispered something to her, and she continued on into the church on her own.
